The President’s budget request for FY 2019 was released on February 12. CRA Director of Government Affairs Peter Harsha provided his analysis of the request in a CRA Computing Research Policy Blog post.

The President’s budget request for FY 2019, released yesterday, includes some modest gains and some big losses for Federal science agencies — details below, but on the whole a rather mixed bag for those who believe in the importance of the Federal investment in fundamental research. But it could have been much worse.

We’d gotten warning that the budget would likely slash science investments at multiple agencies in fairly dramatic ways. But that was before Congress and the Administration managed to agree late last week — with only a brief government shutdown — on a two year budget deal that increased budget caps on both defense and non-defense discretionary spending. That agreement, reached early Friday morning, boosted the non-defense discretionary spending cap by 26 percent over the next two years, and sent the White House’s Office of Management and Budget back to the drawing board over the weekend, revamping the President’s planned request to reflect the new fiscal reality.

Additionally, NSF issued a letter to the community on the request from James Kurose, Assistant Director, and Erwin Gianchandani, Deputy Assistant Director, of NSF CISE. To view the full letter visit the CCC Blog.